Thoughts on new Mac Pro and Millumin?

Hi All,
Has anyone also been imagining the possibilities? Would love to see AMD create drivers for their frame locked media wall cards which would fit in the new Mac Pro finally. I also heard mention of the Black Magic cards supporting framelock, which is one of my biggest concerns right now.

The new pro res module, 24-core option, and the dual duo gpus are all so interesting.

Btw I wonder does Millumin need to be windowed on the same graphics card as the output card in a multi card system? As is with eGPUs?

The black magic cards have many sdi outputs, but are they as capable as Milllumin requires for graphics heavy timelines?

More input and output cards need to start hitting the streets obviously, but the Mac Pro looks like a great platform.

Live camera back to screen with imperceptible delay will be an interesting day if it ever comes.

Comments

  • edited June 2019
    Hello @cmiav,

    It's too early to have accurate understandings about the new MacPro. I guess we'd need its release fall 2019.
    Here are a few technical thoughts :

    - The spec made
    the high-end MacPro a beast (not like the MacPro 2013 on its time, I
    mean here, this is best technology). Maybe the most powerful computer
    that you could buy from a retailler.


    - The entry-level MacPro model will still be highly customizable.

    - Infinity Fabric Link looks like a very important technology : this
    should allow to create a "virtual GPU" from multiple ones, so any
    application could work with multiple GPU without rewritting its code (in
    the same fashion you write an application that can be operated by
    multiple CPU cores). This is huge !

    - All the job made for high-end MacPro will probably benefit to eGPU approach that Apple also embraced.

    - Output synchronization : we discussed about it with an Apple engineer,
    and we've to recontact him after the WWDC to learn more
    about this question. This may or may not be something useful, but I
    guess he wouldn't say so if nothing was in the pipe ...


    Best. Philippe
  • I’ve tested my Blackmagic Decklink 8k with Millumin. It works, although, depending on the destination, I’ve had issues with image appearing vs black (with sdi lock) but that’s in issue on the destination switcher, not Millumin or Blackmagic. FYI, the computers don’t see the Blackmagic SDI cards as display adapters, you can’t send the desktop to it, it’s a hardware tap that gets set via whatever software you are using, so your software has to support it and/or whatever codec it’s using.

    The new Mac Pro looks great but sadly, until Apple and NVIDIA sort out their beef, I won’t be buying and it’s also why my hackintosh is staying on High Sierra.
  • Btw I’m currently running Millumin via a hackintosh media server I built to a 10752x1024 resolution LED wall on 3 dual link outputs. Was going to use the Blackmagic Decklink card but the E2 wouldn’t display image off the SDI taps. (Image pro 2 saw the image fine when I tested it for troubleshooting)
  • Hello @seanradio,

    Thank you for sharing your feedback.
    We also planned to test the DeckLink 8K, but via a Thunderbolt 3 chassis : so far, it's working great (as any Decklink card), but we're even more interested in pushing 3 or 4 x 4K@60 outputs. I guess we'll share our results here.

    Best. Philippe

  • Did the Apple Engineer tell you the answer eventually? Thanks!

    > Millumin >
    - Output synchronization : we discussed about it with an Apple engineer, and we've to recontact him after the WWDC to learn more about this question. This may or may not be something useful, but I guess he wouldn't say so if nothing was in the pipe ...


  • Unfortenatly, they didn't say much ... sorry.

    Best. Philippe
  • @edw @Millumin

    One of Apple's project managers for the Mac Pro actually called me a few months ago to discuss our workflow, and he stated then that all outputs from the same card are frame synchronized but that Apple did not have an in-house solution for sync between different cards.
  • Hello @cmiav,

    Thank you for sharing the info.
    If possible, put us in contact with this Apple's project manager. We are discussing also with Apple engineers, but it's always better to cross-check infos.

    Best. Philippe
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